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MentorMob Lets Instructors Compile Learning Playlists

By Dian Schaffhauser

03/29/12

A new Web 2.0 service facilitates compilation of "learning playlists" containing links to articles and videos that educators can make available to their students and others. MentorMob, from a company by the same name, is a free Web site that provides a repository for aggregating and organizing online educational resources. Once material is added, the viewer, such as a student, can work through the playlist in "steps."

Once a user registers for the site, he or she can develop a new playlist, categorize it by audience (such as "academia & school"), tag it, and then start adding links to the material along with descriptions. For example, a learning playlist about, Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank includes eight steps, providing a timeline of the major events in her family's life that caused them to go into hiding.

Playlists can be made public or private, and the creator can choose to "lock" the playlist or make it public in order to allow others to modify it. Once it's saved, the creator and others can share it through Facebook, Twitter, email, a Web site, or other means.

Although MentorMob can be used by instructors in formal education settings, it can deliver less formal online instruction too. Company founders Kris Chinosorn and Vince Leung said they hope that the collaborative nature of the platform will enable the material to continually grow and improve--"similar to Wikipedia."

"The Internet is the first place most people turn to find information and learn virtually anything, but there's no sense of organization--you have to stumble through, often running into dead ends along the way," said Chinosorn. "At MentorMob, our community members sort through all the content, choose the best snippets and lace them together into a step-by-step course. With MentorMob, you spend more time learning and less time searching."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.

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